Cuckoo In the Nest
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: Orphaned, Elena sought comfort from her new boyfriend; Jeremy, from his bong and an older girl; Sophia made a new friend in Damon Salvatore. She practices with jazz-band; has a part-time job at a café; sketches out her fairy-tale stories where life was colourful and creative. After her brutal intro. to her sister's new life, the reality she had pieced together is shattered forever.
1. Crash

**A.N.**: Hello! So, this is the first chapter of my Kol/OC fanfic – it will be a while before Kol actually makes an appearance, because I'm beginning this story just after the tomb plot-line, just before Isobel comes to town the first time.

I don't know if any of you have ever worked in an understaffed, overcrowded café where the suppliers constantly screw you over with their deliveries, you're out of everything on the menu and people are being shitty and the regular group of useless upper-middle-class mothers bring their darlings in on their nannies' night off, loading them up on brownies and marshmallow-whipped-cream hot-chocolates and let them run around misbehaving and getting underfoot, wilfully oblivious and rude to you, quibbling over a dollar and the ingredients they _don't_ want on things, rewriting the menu and giving you attitude about wanting money off their bill – but I have! Imagine any nonstop, high-pressure task you've done, when everyone's giving _you_ the evils like everything wrong is entirely _your_ fault, you're there doing your best to be polite even when they're the most toxic beings on earth… So that's where I decided to start with Sophia.

I watched the trailer for season two of _The Originals_ and literally gasped – Elijah has scruff! And Mikael _dared_ point Original!Ric's steroid-enhanced white-oak stake at his heart?!

I'm _thinking_ about the direction this story will take if I can write it all the through to the 'Originals' plotline. I'm already planning several huge differences for this story, so it'll be interesting. Things like keeping Pearl and Anna alive; Jenna coming to realise the Gilbert family legacy before John tries to execute his plan for Isobel and Katherine; Bonnie's spell not working during the sacrifice; Elijah appearing when Bonnie drops the veil.

* * *

**Cuckoo In the Nest**

_01_

_Crash_

* * *

They were out of hazelnut creamer, they had no seeded granary rolls, they were completely out of lettuce for the salad-garnish, they had no more batter prepared for the gluten-free oat crêpes, and no more Danish meatballs, and Marcia couldn't stop to make up more of either as she filled Panini orders, made sweet and savoury crêpes, had to frost new cakes and send one of the waiters to the bag-and-buy for more milk and every customer who came in had been rude and impatient, snapping and arrogant as she tried to make hazelnut frappés and soda-with-syrup and single-shot decaf skinny lattés (but they _want_ chocolate sprinkled on top), and if someone asked her for another babyccino she was going to scald them with the frothy milk; they kept demanding _she_ procure more highchairs out of thin-air like she was freaking Hermione Granger and told her while she was trying to ring through a transaction as she danced around trying to froth cappuccino milk, take orders to tables, that the table they _wanted_ to sit at was dirty and _why_ didn't they have more staff and there was no tissue in the bathroom and why weren't there more restrooms?

Compounded by the fact the weekly cluster of spoiled mommies had arrived with their darlings in tow, filling the already cramped café with strollers, taking the two highchairs and commandeering the two largest tables – they came every week, spoiled mid-thirties housewives who lived in luxurious mansions out in Mystic Gardens gated-community, all of them driving excessive SUVs and Range Rovers and huge Mercedes despite the fact they only drove their kids to the expensive private elementary-school, and she knew they only brought their darling little brats because the nannies had the day off – she'd babysat for a couple of the families, knew their lifestyles – and today, the older kids were allowed to run around, making a huge mess of the tables, scrawling on one with a _Sharpie_, taking their mother's chilli-red lipstick to a cushion; they had stolen all the straws; decided after receiving their food they didn't want _this_ in their Panini so Marcia had to remake it, rather than Mommy just remove the 'nasty' bits they didn't want to eat, after they had rewritten almost everything on the menu as they _always_ did. These women glittered with diamonds, looked down their noses, had a thousand better things to do than parent their own unruly children, smiled and nodded as she had asked them to please make sure their children didn't get underfoot as they carried trays of boiling-hot beverages and food around, and promptly turned back to planning their shopping trip in Richmond and their weekend in Vegas celebrating someone's fortieth birthday.

No matter how many times they were asked.

Pregnant women and those on maternity leave with brand-new humans loved Marcia's café – great, organic, locally-sourced foods, a beautiful venue full of Marcia's personality, smiling (and very pretty) staff with a wide array of beverages, a fresh, seasonal menu and the prettiest treats, and usually she was the one smiling; she was great with kids, could get them to stop having a tantrum, joked and teased with them, got them smiling, but the Mystic Gardens mommies were unapproachable, their children spoiled brats. She couldn't believe her mom was friends with some of them…had been. Had been friends.

And no matter how many times the wait-staff asked them to please not let their toddlers crawl around on the floor with their toys everywhere, or told them that their _adorable_ five-year-old had filled the toilet with an entire packet of hand-towels and flooded the restroom; or the time they had made _Sophia_ clean up poop from a highchair when a diaper had exploded while they were chatting, despite _her_ intuition the baby was very unhappy, the mom just shushing them when they screamed… She couldn't stand _these_ women with their kids.

She had spent one sunny afternoon in the summer bouncing a five-month-old around the café in her arms; he'd been the cutest, with enormous blue eyes, perpetual smile while his mom and grandma had enjoyed a baby-free meal. She loved those days, enjoyed smiling and cooing at the babies, had met one newborn two days after her birth after watching her mother's bump get steadily bigger, the debate about names ongoing until she had popped – the story about baby's birth had been hilarious, going into labour at home at three a.m., her husband on the phone to the emergency-response, when asked what he saw, screaming "_A mess!_"

This was not one of those calm afternoons where she could linger at a table having a chat with the customers she had come to know by name and coffee order, having a cuddle with their babies. Today was hell.

And as she rang through a cheque at the cash-register, she gave an older, frowning woman dripping in diamonds her change and receipt, dazed and wired from running around nonstop all day, she hadn't had a break, or even a glass of water, or even time to _pee_ while Nicole was being a stroppy little bitch – she did _not_ handle extreme pressure well, and this tiny café was not built for an excess of customers bombarding them like a tsunami of rudeness – and this woman had the nerve to lean over as she took her receipt, gave her a _look_, and sneered, "_Pleases and thank-yous_."

Stunned. She was stunned – and disgusted, that this woman, standing in the middle of the bomb-blast that was Marcia's teeny café, seeing her running ragged while Nicole swore like sailor on leave in the back as she stormed off for _another_ cigarette break, the tables that needed waiting, the coffees that needed making, the fact the bakery display was wiped out except for a few crumbs, they were out of soup, they had run out of pizza dough an hour ago and people were being assy with her like it was her fault, this woman, who wore at least six carats on one finger alone, had the nerve to say _she_ needed to be more polite.

There were several things she wanted to say – Get the fuck out and don't come back; Can't you see I'm emulating Wonder Woman? _I_ will if _you_ will – but all Sophie could do, with her brain frazzled from needing to do a hundred different chores, starving, angry with the Mystic Gardens mommies and their pampered, undisciplined brats, all she could do, was hitch an enormous, vicious grin onto her lips, and say jauntily, "Have an absolutely _fabulous_ day, ma'am!"

Her mom had always taught her to take the high road. Marcia had taught her to be polite as possible and ask how any situation could be fixed, what customers _wanted_ her to do, to dispel tension. But she was under intense pressure, wanted to smack this woman in the face with one of the ceramic cake-stands, but _couldn't_. So vicious smiles and being exaggeratedly chipper were her weapon.

Nicole finally reappeared, reeking of tobacco, scowl still in place but vibrant lipstick reapplied as she set out a fresh Black Forest gateau and a tray of frosted cupcakes and a tub of macarons, as Josh returned with a shit load of milk from the cash-and-carry, taking over the cash-register; she topped an iced latté with some frothed milk, made a cappuccino, a mocha, a hazelnut latté, and stopped by the window to take a dish of _pasta alla norma_, a bowl of wild-mushroom soup that made her stomach cramp at how hungry she was, and a pointy oval dish of various bruschetta from Marcia and hitched it all up, palm flat, to shoulder-height. She had to dodge a large group of obnoxious people blatantly ignoring her trying to get past as they chatted away, huffing to each other about the service and how long it took to make a coffee and why weren't there any tables free and _clean_ – and edged around a table of customers waiting for their foot – she smiled and said an apology, Marcia would be preparing their food now, she edged around, aware of the vengeful looks she was getting from other customers, riled by the insidious comments of people who _knew_ she could hear them, rattled by someone shouting to her that they wanted a refund for waiting so long seconds before she set their bruschetta down, and she balanced her tray, knowing Josh was under fire at the counter, sought table eight in her view, started off in that direction, and suddenly, her ankle was twisting.

One second she was upright, everything was chaotic and the god Stress was literally squeezing her from every direction, she manoeuvred the narrow space between people at different tables, tried not to focus on the fact the Mystic Gardens mommies were laughing raucously as their kids jumped on the leather-upholstered booth seat, one of the highchair-bound toddlers throwing carrot-cake all over the floor, then suddenly, her foot had connected with something soft but sturdy and out of sight, her ankle twisting, and then – nothing: an enormous crash, she didn't see anything until she was flat on her front, winded, the awareness everything had gone flying, and _pain_ – it seared her skin, all the way up her right arm, seeping through her t-shirt, so sudden, so _hot_ it felt almost icy before sensation caught up with action and she froze, trembling, at the scalding pain, she was dazed, aware her arm was covered in a mixture of frothy, fragrant milk and mushroom-soup, eggplant spaghetti was splattered all over the carpet and her t-shirt as she sat up, flinching at the pain splashing across her neck and ear from the drinks, her knee and her chin pounding from where she had fallen without anything to brace the impact, the heel of her palm starting to bleed where she noticed one of the plates had broken into large shards, glass glittering where a latté glass had shattered, milk everywhere, and…she blinked.

Then she became aware of the silence. And then, the screaming baby – and a manic rush, Josh appearing suddenly with an armful of towels, hastily wiping the scalding liquid off her arm and neck and ear, while the Mystic Gardens mommies all jumped out of their seats, one of them scooping up the screaming toddler – the toddler she had _asked them_, _three fucking times_ to put in a highchair so he wasn't underfoot while she carried _boiling fucking soup_ to other customers. As she sat, stoic and wide-eyed, uncertain what had happened and how she should react, blinking, realising they had other customers waiting to be seated and she had to replace the drinks and needed to apologise to Marcia and could she re-make the spaghetti and soup order before the customers at eight left in a huff, and the mucky cotton of her t-shirt was sticking to her, her hands were shaking as everything felt too hot, her skin was too tight for her body where the soup had burned her, she was aware of an acute rage as the mommies clucked over the little darling she had _kicked_ – Josh hooked his hands under her arms and gently lifted her to her feet, pushing her toward the staff staircase upstairs, telling her to go rinse her arm under cold water, as he threw a couple towels down over the spilt spaghetti, smashed crockery and called for Marcia to come out the kitchen.

Eyes smarting, the pain of the scalding catching up with her after the initial shock of being sent flying by an eleven-month-old, she hurried to the door into the staircase, itching to scrape her soaked, ruined t-shirt off her as she took the stairs two at a time, desperate to get to the bathroom. Upstairs, the tiny apartment where Marcia did her ordering, cleaning supplies and extra ingredients were kept in separate store-rooms, and the staff-room was located where in theory they could eat a free meal on their breaks, relaxing on one of the sofas, there was a full bathroom, complete with shower – and today, Sophia was grateful for it, as she tossed her t-shirt into the tub, grabbed the showerhead and turned the water onto cold.

Her neck was okay, it had only been splattered by spaghetti and splashed by cappuccino foam, but her arm and her waist were a splotchy, angry red. She sat awkwardly on the edge of the tub, the edge of the sink digging into her back, the showerhead pointed toward her arm and waist as she tried to get the spray over the tub rather than the floor, and rested her head back against the wall, shivering as the icy jet started to cool her skin. Her eyes burned, and her throat hurt. The sudden calm and intense quiet of the bathroom pressed in on her, and despite the cold water dousing her, soaking the top of her jeans, she allowed herself to _let go_ for the first time since the rush started.

Today had started out such a good day. She'd managed to recreate the style her hairdresser had created when she'd had a trim and redesign last week, using her straighteners and curling wand; she'd been up early enough to watch some TV and filed and buffed her fingernails, done some drawing and texted Damon for a little bit. The weather had been mild, though chilly, and she had taken a leisurely pace to work. The eighty-three-year-old grandpa who came in every Saturday morning to take one of his _four_ girlfriends to breakfast had invited her to chat with him about his experiences in the Far East in the 1950s when he was in the Army, the fact his _other_ girlfriend, not the one he brought out for breakfast, had bought him an _iPad_, and he had to have lessons from his five-year-old grandson to work it. She had met the brand-new baby Poppy who had arrived only two days ago, her mother a regular customer who came for cake and coffee several times a week, and she had laughed so hard with Josh this morning that his face had gone bright red, tears shining down his cheeks, over _nothing_.

Now the cramps she had gotten from laughing so hard at something she couldn't remember had been replaced by the pain of being scalded by mushroom soup that had ruined her t-shirt, tiny bits of blended mushroom stuck to the cotton with strips of eggplant and pork ragu, she was livid at those spoiled women, angry that Nicole was such a lazy, foulmouthed cow, and…didn't know what to do.

This was the first break she'd had all day, the rush hitting them suddenly near eleven a.m. and not stopping now even at half-past four, she was starving, hadn't realised how the last five hours had completely exhausted her, she was _hurt_ and there was a lingering thought in the back of her mind that she'd have to go home later to a kitchen stocked only with off-coloured guacamole, coffee beans and Jeremy's Rocky Road cereal. Unless they went out, again.

She'd officially tried _everything_ on the menu at The Grill. She was tired of eating out, of scrounging a meal of nachos and mayonnaise after jazz-band while she did her laundry and tried to struggle through Biology homework. She had been _dreaming_ of her mom's venison brisket with gravy-soaked carrots, mash and braised savoy cabbage. She daydreamed of the surprises her mom used to slip into their bagged-lunches every day. A five-dollar bill for lunch didn't cut it: she'd been hoarding the lunch-money Jenna had been giving her and Jeremy every day, intending to buy something nice for Jenna. The _Dior_ perfume she liked, or a subscription to _eHarmony_. Hopefully the site filtered out the usual kind of losers Jenna dated.

And if Sophia had been under pressure today, she couldn't imagine how Jenna was doing it, keeping it together for them, going to school, exhausted by the realisation her social life had been put on the back-burner while Jeremy succumbed to drugs and an older woman and Elena disappeared without calling for over twenty-four hours and pouted over her new off/on boyfriend…

She let her mind switch off, drifting, as she sat under the cold jet, she didn't know for how long; all she knew was the tiny roll of flab at her stomach was creasing as she sat hunched, she was shivering in her little triangle-bra and her jeans were sticking to her, the mess on her t-shirt was gross and she had brought no spare, she would have to ride her bicycle home _topless_…and she wasn't Elena, she didn't want or need a boyfriend to help her deal, and, yes, her boobs were little but she thought they were cute. Ish? Enough to warrant a guy's attention, maybe? But it was cold out, and she didn't fancy Sheriff Forbes giving her the she's-an-orphan sigh and excuse her the public indecent-exposure arrest.

A knock sounded gently on the door, and she sat up straighter, blinking sluggishly, pulled out of a doze, hoping it wasn't Josh. Sure, she had just been thinking she didn't mind her boobs, but she didn't want to be topless in front of _Josh_ – tall, built and with pale-blue eyes blazing from a deeply-tanned Mediterranean complexion, he could lift her with one arm and was this big, sturdy, cheeky little ass who loved to tease her. He was _cute_, and had a string of girlfriends; Jenna had seen him a few times over the summer and almost gone into cougar-heat over him.

She grunted softly, and the door opened. Marcia appeared. She was in her late-forties, a former nutritionist who had earned certification at _Le Cordon Bleu_ in Paris as a fortieth-birthday gift from her husband, and a wonderful person. Sophia had been bussing tables and making coffees for Marcia for over a year, but had never been invited into the kitchen until this past June. Marcia had brought Sophia into the kitchen on a slower afternoon, and taught her how to make an omelette. And then a savoury crêpe; and different pasta sauces; and ratatouille. And dough she could make at home into rolls or thin-crust pizzas. Simple, flavoursome and healthy things Sophia could make when the cupboard at home was bare and she couldn't carry a whole load of groceries home on her bicycle. The idea of takeout and restaurant-food had started turning her stomach around August-time, after one too many _Dominoes_, when she had started missing her mother's cooking more than anything else.

The water still rinsing off her arm, a chill to her bones, her jeans decidedly soggy, she sniffed and sat up a little straighter, shy in only her bra, and she ducked her chin shamefacedly. "I'm sorry about all the mess."

"Hope you gave that baby a _real_ hard kick for all the hassle he caused," Marcia said, and Sophia's lips twitched to a tremulous smile. "I hope that woman's new baby has a really _fat_ head when it's born."

"She cause a scene?" Sophia asked miserably, heaviness settling on her chest. A sufferer of asthma, she acutely experienced what it felt not to be able to breathe. This was similar, but had its own flavour of pain and despair, guilt weighing on her for the broken crockery and the mess they would have to clean up. Not even embarrassment about wiping out – her anger at the customers being so obnoxious neutralised any humiliation.

"She tried – I know you'd asked multiple times for them to keep their kids in highchairs," Marcia sighed. "I've asked repeatedly, so's Joshua."

"Was the kid hurt?"

"He was fine, just screaming his head off," Marcia sighed, rolling her eyes. "I think his mom was angrier you _kicked_ him than upset he was hurt. Before I cut her off she tried giving me a tongue-lashin' about my staff, I told her she and her friends have been asked at least twice every time they come in to keep an eye on their kids because we carry trays full of hot food and drinks. How is your arm?"

"Cold," Sophia mumbled, sniffing softly.

"Keep it under the water for ten more minutes," Marcia advised, wincing in sympathy as she peered at Sophia's arm. "It'll stop the burn from getting worse. And I'm calling Jenna."

"No, no, no, you don't need to do that," Sophia said, starting, sitting up straighter. "We're crushed already!"

"I've closed the kitchen," Marcia said sternly, giving Sophia a look. "Josh is gonna fill any existing food orders in the kitchen, and Nicole's cleaning up the mess." Sophia's lips twitched. Burned and turning into an icicle as she was, livid at the Mystic Gardens mommies, she couldn't help smirk at the karma, that lazy, unpleasant Nicole had been forced to clean up the mess Sophia had made rushing around pulling her own weight and carrying Nicole's load. Forced to clean up the cappuccino froth, the spaghetti, the little bits of mushroom and shattered glass.

"What were you and Josh laughing about so hard this morning?" Sophia shook her head gently.

"I don't remember," she said hoarsely, her eyes stinging.

Marcia sank down onto the toilet, wincing at Sophia. She reached out to hold Sophia's hand, patting it lightly. She gave Sophia a pained smile, sighing. "Today started out such a good day."

Lip trembling, eyes burning ominously, Sophia nodded, the choking, hot, painful feeling in her lungs she associated with asthma-attacks, and crying, creeping up on her, but she closed her eyes, internalising it, looking away from Marcia and letting out a slow, shaky breath. A cool hand resting on her shoulder, she winced and refused to look up; Marcia sighed and pulled her into a hug. For a second, Sophia resisted, then melted, refusing to cry but the delayed-reaction of being burned and tripping and all of the stress of the day piling on her… She needed to go home.

"I'm going to call Jenna, to come get you," Marcia said, after giving Sophia's back a rub.

"I have my bicycle," she said hoarsely, sniffing. She had her jacket and thick pashmina-scarf.

"I don't think you should cycle home, Sophia."

"Jenna has to go to campus," she sniffed. Jenna wasn't happy she had to go to campus today, but it was the only day her thesis-adviser was willing to put aside some time to go through Jenna's work with her, Jenna's schedule so hectic during the week as she parented three teenage orphans. "She's working on her thesis… She needs this meeting."

"Alright. I'll let you bike home, but you send me a text on my cell when you get in, okay?" she said, and Sophia nodded gloomily. Home. To an empty building that had once been full of the scent of her mother's perfume, the news on so loud due to her dad's poor hearing, board-games usually half-completed on the coffee-table in the den. No more: the house hadn't been truly clean since May, hadn't felt the same since then.

"Okay," she agreed. Just like that, and she was allowed a reprieve from the last hour of her shift: she tucked her fur-lined suede jacket around her, her pashmina wrapped warmly and thick around her neck. She tugged her gloves on, wincing at the heat already ensconcing her from her jacket, and made her way outside via the back staff exit. Her vintage-style bicycle was propped against the wall, basket and gel saddle misted over from a light rain, but her jeans were already wet and she put her purse in the basket. She had saved babysitting money for ages to pay for the vintage bicycle, and instead of getting her licence freshman-year, Sophia chose to get daily casual exercise by cycling everywhere.

And given her emotional state, and the heat suffusing her skin, cycling home was exactly what she needed. After a long day working on her feet, her dad had always advised cycling or going for a walk or a run, to reinvigorate her, rather than taking a nap, but she was going to stand in a cool shower for an hour when she got home. She was going to scrub the cake-crumbs and sugar and the coffee grounds and simple-syrups from her hands, clean her fingernails of the muck that accumulated under them during every shift she worked; she was going to buff her fingernails ready to paint in the morning, she was going to make herself something to eat and climb into bed and just _sleep_. The cool, clear air helped her to breath as she cycled home; the humidity and heat of a Virginia summer always made her regret the sunshine and freedom of summer vacation: she enjoyed the clear air and turning foliage of fall, and the first hints of spring only people who cycled or walked everywhere noticed – the tiny snowdrops peeking in the grasses where what little snow they'd had this year had started to melt away, the odd splash of purple or rich golden-yellow from the earliest crocuses… Cycling was cathartic to her, needing less physical exertion than kickboxing, and it relaxed her, as she cycled she could feel her anger at the Mystic Gardens mommies drifting off her like filmy veils whirling in the breeze…her imagination started whirring, a clue she was recovering from the stress of the day and her exhaustion, the physical pain she had experienced.

That didn't last long, though. She cycled all the way home – not far; this was Mystic Falls, and everything was within walking distance, though nobody did walk – and stayed on her bike as she pedalled to the gate, unlocking it, and, still straddling her bike, walked it to the yard. In an attempt to get off the bike, it collapsed on the grass, and Sophia sighed, staring down at the polished frame, the back-wheel spinning, her shoulders heavy, tired. She gathered her purse where it had spilled out of the basket onto the grass, and sluggishly made her way to the back-porch. She left her bicycle where it was – a sure indication to Jenna, who could tell how Sophia's day had gone just by her bearing, the way she walked, that something was up. Running her hand exhaustedly over her eyes, smearing her makeup, she yawned, her throat tight, and as she closed the back-door quietly, she heard Jenna's footsteps. She was growing accustomed to the new sounds in her home; Jenna's quick, light footfall was one of them.

"Marcia called," Jenna said in greeting, already wearing an expression of concern. Her eyes went wide, and she asked, "Are you okay?"

Sophia shook her head, and burst into tears.

* * *

**A.N.**: I have to go to work for a meeting/anniversary barbecue, which I do _not_ want to go to, but I thought I'd upload the first chapter before I go. There may be a few chapters of build-up, showing the difference between Sophia's life and the secret-life Elena is keeping from everyone in canon. I'll get to the context of where the plot is, canon-wise, where my story starts, in another chapter. But Damon will appear in the next chapter, you'll start to see his relationship with Sophia. Please review.


	2. Saturday Night In

**A.N.**: Thank you to _caseylu_ and _lovingthisbook_, since you reviewed first, this chapter is dedicated to you.

Ugh, I hate Elena. I've been watching the episode after she turns her humanity-switch off, the cheerleading/party episode with Hayley. I thought I liked her. Now I know I don't. Anyway, I don't get why people are falling over themselves over Nina Dobrev. She has really weird legs.

I think Elena "shutting off her humanity" only showed everyone exactly what she was truly like. Proves she is _exactly _like Katherine, despite what she pretends – and Katherine isn't even the worse version; she _never_ turns her humanity off.

Okay, just so everyone knows, when I think of Sophia, I see _**EMMA WATSON**_. Because, let's face it, she's a goddess. She is the role-model every girl should look up to: an incredibly hard-worker, she earned a degree from an Ivy League school despite being able to retire her great-grandchildren early! She makes conscious decisions how to behave in public; she is immaculate on the red-carpet with a classic but edgy style; she is conscientious, she worked on an eco-friendly clothing line; she's articulate about being herself and being unafraid of being imperfect; she's been named a UN Ambassador. And we all grew up watching her school Harry and Ron; let's face it, Hermione is the only reason they survived that long! Vogue UK *online does a great slideshow of her hairvolution.

* * *

**Cuckoo In the Nest**

_02_

_Saturday Night In_

* * *

Jenna had been waiting for this. _Elena_, she could handle; Jenna knew what she wanted. Jeremy was more like her than she really wanted to admit; she had too many stories about her misspent youth, she'd be excellent to give advice for hangover-cures, pregnancy scares, bad haircut choices and failed Trig tests, but Jeremy had closed himself off, had started hanging out with an older girl. Jenna couldn't judge, she'd made more than her fair share of bad decisions when it came to dating.

But Sophia? Jenna didn't know what she wanted. Never knew when she was going to have a meltdown, how big it would be, or what they were even about. Last September, she'd collapsed in a messy heap in the garage over a broken bike-chain, realising Grayson wasn't around to fix it the way he had always tended to mechanical, medicinal stuff around the house. That had been the first time Jenna had seen her cry since before Miranda and Grayson's accident. While Elena had been in fits of tears since waking up in the hospital, Jeremy had cried at the funeral and gotten stoned every day thereafter, Sophia had been dry-eyed, wan and more _angry_ than anything.

Sophia blamed Elena.

She hadn't been shy letting them know how she felt about Elena's part in their parents' deaths.

The relationship between the two girls, never a picture-perfect twin bond, more an ordinary sibling one with rivalries, tension, screaming arguments, fights over sweaters and bathroom-time, hormones flying, had fractured.

The girls had never been best-friends; now Jenna couldn't remember the last time Sophia had actually spoken to Elena. It didn't make for a very pleasant home, but then, her nieces and nephew were orphans, she was a twenty-eight-year-old grad student who'd never even had a goldfish let alone kept one alive, and they were trying to muddle through a horrific tragedy that had literally jerked the rug from under all their lives.

Everyone handled their grief differently. Elena buried herself in it; Jeremy got stoned; Sophia bottled it up except when she poured it into delightfully eccentric, colourful artwork, and until something hit her like a freight truck and she had a meltdown. Those meltdowns were cathartic for her, the crying eased whatever tension she was building up that she wouldn't confide in Jenna. Jeremy had little social interaction; she'd heard every twist and turn of the Stefan saga. Sophia's social-life was an enigma; if there was a boy, Jenna would have no clue, just like Miranda never had. She knew Sophia had made a best-friend of Stefan's older-brother Damon, and had a gut-feeling that Sophia may be putting all her eggs in one basket with that one – he was older, charming, seductive; she worried he would take off and leave Sophia in the lurch. Guys like Damon did.

Oddly, she didn't worry that Sophia would be drawn in by Damon's charisma. She was almost innocent in how clueless she was to the effect she had on boys. It just didn't even compute. Oh, Jenna knew Sophia liked the look of a few boys – she'd seen that Joshua she worked with, and _damn_! – but if any had ever shown any interest in her, Sophia probably wouldn't have recognised it for what it was, or even given it a second thought.

While Elena had gone from Matt to Stefan and was probably doomed to a life of serial monogamy, Jeremy had turned into a little slut with a huge heart, Sophia…she didn't try to deal with Miranda and Grayson's deaths by sublimating her feelings with sex or seeking out romantic attachments she believed would fix everything. That wasn't Sophia. She wasn't boy-crazed; she was a hard-worker who struggled at school and had a hard time dealing with the little things – a broken bicycle chain; an empty inhaler prescription; the death of her pet corn-snake Magnacious; booking a dentist appointment; choosing the packet option for her school yearbook photo; where Miranda kept the Swiffer and the bathroom cleaning-supplies – rather than accepting her parents were gone.

Elena had been in denial: Jeremy had become numb. Sophia was the most accepting person Jenna had ever met; she had her own fire, but she absorbed things in a way few people could. She had gotten out of bed every morning, never showing it even if she had struggled; she didn't judge Jeremy for how he was coping. She functioned better than any of them did, better than a lot of people, actually. She blanked Elena, but aside from that, Sophia was handling her life.

Most of the time.

She cried on the sofa, curled up against Jenna, for probably fifteen minutes, all snotty and swollen-eyed and in danger of triggering her asthma and her eyes stinging from her mascara, her arm burning from her jacket, the exhaustion of the day and her anger and emotional upheaval at being put under intense pressure today, wiping out, and the misery she had been pouring into colourful fairy-tale illustrations and consciously eccentric artwork crippling her.

But when she had exhausted herself from crying, this weight lifted off her, this…_peace_ settled gently and she dozed, snuffling, for a few minutes while Jenna rubbed her back. A few months ago she had broken down over her bicycle chain snapping. She'd been perfectly fine one second – Jeremy had come out to ask what the hell she was doing, and she'd snapped. Broken. She had broken down twice that afternoon within hours, spent the evening splotchy and red and sniffling through a blocked nose and Elena had waltzed in with her new boyfriend.

That was the night she had met Damon – completely gross from crying and depressed, but the crying had always been like a purge for her. She didn't do it often, and never anticipated when she would break – who ever could? – but when she had gotten it all out of her system, this serenity gentled her raw feelings, the itchy, burning sensation she got all over her skin from intense emotional upheaval, the ache in her chest that had been there since last May… She started thinking about her stories, her hated Geometry homework, and examined her fingernails. Every Saturday she spent ages scrubbing her fingernails clean, getting rid of the food residue, the coffee grounds, the build-up of cleaning products; she would file and buff her fingernails, apply a coat of strengthening basecoat, and every Sunday she would meticulously paint her nails. Tomorrow, she had plans with Damon. The National Theatre in London was broadcasting a production of _King Lear_ to over thirty-five different countries, and Damon had bought tickets for the two of them: she was studying _King Lear_ in English Literature and wanted to watch the play to get a better grasp on the style of the language.

But until then, tonight she had homework to finish, she wanted to do some drawing, she had to do this week's laundry, and her arm was starting to prickle with heat, as if she'd been in the sun a little too long. Jenna had left for campus, reluctantly, and only with Sophia's promise that she would feed herself, curl up in bed and get a good night's sleep – and not practice her saxophone after nine p.m. Jenna had a habit of staying up late to study, but she also made a habit of not telling_ them_ to go to bed, so at two a.m. Jeremy was still playing Xbox, and Sophia was either drawing, listening to her iPod or her vinyl records, or watching reruns of _The French Chef_ while she ate raspberry jelly and crunchy peanut-butter out of the tub, folding her laundry and obsessing over new patterned socks, jewellery and re-alphabetising her DVD collection, downloading TV shows illegally.

Tonight she was in the mood for some comfort-food – scrambled-eggs on toast with sautéed mushrooms. She would listen to some of her favourite upbeat jazz records, colour the illustrations she had done at school yesterday, after reading through the chapter in her Geometry textbook that Ms Smith was probably going to cover Monday-morning, and finishing the equations Ms Smith had set for their Friday-night homework. They'd had a quiz Friday-morning – they _always_ had a quiz Friday-morning, to make sure they were absorbing the lessons Ms Smith taught through the week – and Sophia had not been dazzled by her own performance. The truth was, she was an artist and a musician; math gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She would much rather doodle and write make-believe stories than use a protractor and compass and try to do her geometry equations.

As she stood under the jet, rinsing off the mushroom-soup and the cappuccino froth and the frustration, the pain of biting her tongue to keep from chewing some rude customer out, washing away the exhaustion of her breakdown, she washed her hair and climbed out of the shower. Putting her hair in a wrap, she rubbed moisturiser into her face, and climbed into her favourite slob outfit – her comfiest cotton girl-boxers, a pair of purplish-red fleece plaid pyjama bottoms, and a very faded sage-green sweater printed with _Sleeping Beauty_, over a threadbare heather-grey t-shirt printed with a pair of kitty-flick glasses, and the phrase 'Team Don't Read Crappy Books'. Snuffling, miserable but her heart feeling lighter, she tugged on a pair of odd socks – pale pink, patterned with tiny gold glitter pineapples; and pale beige, with French bulldogs – and, thinking about her spirit animal, Dobby the House Elf, she shuffled into her room.

"You look _ravishing_!" a voice said, and Sophia yelled out, jumping. He _always_ did that to her. And he got her _every time_.

"_Damon_!" she growled, vowing to take her sax into the bathroom with her, so she'd at least have some form of weapon to whack him with. He chuckled richly, kicking back on her bed, her sketchbook open in his lap. From the moment they had met, Damon had been a presence that commanded every room – he took possession of anything he picked up, and lounged on her purple comforter as if it were his own. He was this gorgeous, irreverent, sweet guy who loved punk, classic literature like _Gone With the Wind_; he loved Etta James but _loathed_ anything to do with the 1950s, had lasted less than eighteen months in the Army and had the most gorgeous collection of watches Sophia had ever seen. He appreciated art, was an amazing cook, and he had travelled – he told her stories about different places he had visited, countries and cities Sophia wished she could visit someday. She had this idea of cycling Europe after high-school, with only a tent, some _Euros_ and a change of panties.

"So, apparently I missed the food-fight," he said, turning back to her sketchbook. Sophia sighed softly, smacking his feet as she walked past the bed.

"Get your boots off of my comforter," she said sternly, and Damon sighed, kicking his boots off. They clunked heavily onto the floor, and Sophia rubbed her eyes, tired. She unwrapped her hair, feathered some product in and gently blow-dried it while Damon watched her unabashedly, frowning a little. "It was over before it started, believe me."

Sophia was a very petite, classic beauty. While Elena was all hair and gangly limbs, taller than her sister, there was no indication other than eye-colour that these girls were twins. Of course, Damon knew the secrets of the Gilbert family – a few of them, actually – but he knew if Sophia were to find out about Elena being adopted, she wouldn't question it for a second. She and Elena looked nothing alike. Elena had kind of a small, squat face, a pout and was kind of scrawny if you looked at her too hard, and in Damon's opinion her being so skinny just drew attention to her odd-looking thighs. But Sophia…she was petite, classically beautiful in very dainty proportions. When Damon had met her, she'd been swollen-eyed and snuffly from crying hours before: she had also shorn her head to an exquisitely flattering pixie-cut. She was a natural light-brunette but over the last six months had proven herself to be far more adventurous and experimental about her appearance than her "twin" sister Elena. She had gone blonder after cutting her hair into a pixie – a style that had highlighted her delicate features, enhancing just how naturally beautiful she was – but as it had started to grow out over the fall, into a boyish cut that was extraordinarily flattering on her, she had experimented with going darker, adding rich natural highlights, parting her hair dramatically to the side, experimenting with tousling her locks, slicking them back, pinning her hair back with pearl bobby-pins… She was the creative one.

Sophia's bedroom was an external manifestation of her inner-life: It wasn't enough for Sophia to express herself through constant experimentation with her appearance. One third of her bedroom was exactly as it had been the night her parents had died – a warm mauve colour, the trim a clean cream, a single ornately-framed art print on the wall, with a memento from her childhood, an embroidery-hoop with a piece of sewing her grandmother had made, her name with a stitched giraffe in scraps. A gold letter _S_ was hung above the art print. A saxophone was propped in its stand in the corner, beautifully polished.

But the rest of her bedroom, it was chaotic, expressive, _colourful_. A fat two-inch silver strip of duct-tape was meticulously applied marking a third of two of the walls: beyond that line, there were no rules for Sophia to follow. She was allowed to do whatever she liked beyond that tape: she could pin up sketches and photographs, she could paint directly onto the walls; one night she had gotten bored and painted a mural in nail-polish on the wall, after taking cans of paint and a brush to it the week before. Over a roughly-painted patch of matte eggplant-purple, decorated with a neat, ornately-painted 'frame' in scarlet, gold and amethyst, were musical notes, her favourite measure from her favourite jazz song, painted in gold Sharpie. Almost every inch of the walls were papered with Sophia's illustrations, coloured or in-progress; none of her artwork was dark, angry. She wasn't Peyton Sawyer, though she absolutely adored the character. Sophia was a consciously colourful, expressive girl, she wasn't hateful or depressed…at least, she didn't focus and latch onto those emotions. She used paint, makeup, music to express herself, used her artwork to say things she couldn't or didn't want to say. Despite her young age, Damon appreciated her small but educated collection of vinyl albums. Mostly jazz and classical, there were a few comedy albums – Bill Cosby – and even some old-school punk.

Her art supplies were organised neatly under the glass top of a glossy narrow black table, her laptop charging atop it with a couple vintage cameras, and an armchair draped with a couple pashminas, a delicate silk shawl and a knitted scarf stood in the corner of the room, a large artist's clipboard propped against it, a half-completed illustration clamped to it. In the other corner, the wall decorated with a length of black matte wallpaper with glossy baroque feather scrollwork, a beautiful ornate gold frame decorated a brand-new bevel-edged mirror hung over a plain polished side-table, and a Deco-style mirrored, velvet-upholstered stool was tucked beneath it: atop the table, an ornate Deco-style lamp gave a glimpse of the previous theme of Sophia's room, relaxed glamour; now, a triple-tiered silver cake-stand served as one of the organisers for her cosmetics, nail-polishes and perfumes. A rectangular wooden block served to house her meticulously-clean brushes, eyelash-curlers, scissors, glass nail-files, buffing blocks and blending sponges; her earrings seemed to levitate within a delicate gold frame, and a sinuous 'tree' glittered with her necklaces and bracelets, all of them delicate, pretty, subtle. A scented candle – and her hair-products, her various cosmetic powders and her perfumes – served to help mask the scent of fresh paint and nail-polish.

He could feel Sophia's eyes on him as he slowly went through the most recent illustrations in her sketchbook. Some were just tiny little details, some were full pages, either still in pencil, half-inked with her favourite Macron pens, some weren't her illustrations at all: Sophia was obsessed with makeup, and creative things – she liked to pretend she was a product and marketing developer for cosmetic companies, redesigning the product packaging and containers. She was inspired by Van Gogh, by Mucha and Edmund Dulac, by Marilyn Minter and was inspired by sharp Art Deco angles and decadence, and absolutely worshipped the illustrator Trina Schart-Hyman. Her favourite cosmetic companies with superior, quirky packaging were _Benefit Cosmetics_ and _TheBalm_.

She…wrote one immaculate _Harry Potter_ fanfiction and Damon knew had she been able to choose her career, if she couldn't be a professional saxophonist, she would settle to be Design and Development Manager of _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_.

She was a gloriously talented artist.

She had pages devoted to magical products she had designed – cosmetics and fun things he never could've come up with in a hundred years, like frog-shaped hibiscus-red bath-beads that filled the tub with iridescent fuschia and gold bubbles scented with hibiscus, jasmine and chilli, leaving a faint shimmer of gold on the skin; or the foundation she had imagined up, with pore-minimising, skin-clearing properties and "dittany" to smooth and heal acne scars, named after the nymphs of the Pleiades constellation. Or the magical lipsticks and special-effects nail-polishes with names like 'Nice Knickers', 'Topless', 'Faking It', 'Thigh High' and 'Insolent Plum', 'So Frisk Me', 'Vicious Trollop', 'Busty Strumpet' and 'All Tied Up'.

She had dreamed up packaging and advertising posters for Brew-Your-Own Love Potions; edible decorations for cakes with unexpected magical side-effects – she'd had a lot of fun drawing her little character Princess Lavish in the immediate aftermath of having eaten a fairy-cake decorated on the sly by Sirius Black, with a moustache of dainty daffodils, a superb magenta tint to her skin with glitter stars all over it, her enormous River Song curls having turned turquoise, and sparkling like Catherine Wheels, her feet slowly levitating above her ears with the growth of tiny dragonfly-wings.

Damon had no clue what 'Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' was, but it made Sophia happy, chuckling to herself as she typed rapid-fire on her laptop or sketched: He was only halfway through _Goblet of Fire_ but Sophia had promised to get the Kleenex ready for him. Ominous.

He'd decided to wait until the 'hype' was over and read the books then: he should've picked up the first in '97 when he'd been enduring his time in London amongst vampires still clinging to the 1970s. At least he'd have had something to distract him from _the_ _Nineties_. On the plus side, _Spice_ _Girls_ had made the mini-dress hot again for the first time since the morally-questionable 1960s.

He came upon a scribbled anecdote in Sophia's handwriting on one of the high-quality pages, and smirked as he read;

'_The light sparkled vividly off the tropical tide-pools pockmarking the shoreline, thriving and vibrant with life, pretty Licentia the cheeseburger-obsessed mermaid poking her slick head out of the water to smile and accept a grilled-cheese sandwich from Princess Lavish, who had emptied a picnic feast – buttercup tea, tomato salad, steamed oysters, nachos, plum tarts and espresso – onto her blanket spread out on the coral, it being the Princess' day off from waiting on Vlad the dragon who had a fetish for mudpies, purple-iguana oatmeal, crazy-golf, trains and iTunes. Lavish was attended as always by her pet capuchin monkey, wearing a hand-embroidered silk waistcoat, and Lazlo the dragonfly-winged, literate kumquat-eating mouse. You see, there was always a danger of poison for Lavish – she was allergic to peanuts – therefore the capuchin tasted her food; and Flambé the mouse helped the princess sort Vlad's mail, she being only five years old._

_ 'The sound of impact against rubber alerted them, almost too late, to the presence of the bi-weekly soccer game held between the eight-year-old ostrich boys, and their long-time rivals the airborne, winged pygmy-zebras. The zebras had the element of flight in their favour – but the ostriches had one hell of a kick, and as Licentia disappeared in a plop of water and a splash, making Flambé's wings glitter with mist, his whiskers flickering, Princess Lavish drew herself up off the blanket, straightening her crown, glowering as the backgammon board she had set up to play with Viggo the cloud-surfing shark went flying, the pieces scattering, as a soccer-ball thwacked out of nowhere. Faced with a stampede of ostrich children and awkward pygmy zebras still unused to their wings, Princess Lavish placed her hands on her hips, and glowered_.'

Damon chuckled, frowning bemusedly, wondering where she came up with this nonsense, and eyed the sketchbook she always carried around, spent most of her time doodling in during classes, too engrossed by the make-believe world she had created for the kids she babysat, and for herself, where everything was colourful and odd and delightful.

Sophia had created a world of five-year-old Princess Lavish, of the Babysitter and the valiant knight P.K. Vizzini, and Vlad the dragon. A world where backgammon was enjoyed in inlaid Moorish courtyards full of sun and exotic fruits; where the fashion was to turn fickle princes into pinks and the odd hedgehog; where an odd prince-in-exile wore leather trousers, ate damson jam out of the jar, had a habit of licking things to absorb information from them; where a nonagenarian dowager-empress with a cake-fetish _always_ took the advice of squirrels, spouted poetry and astrology and played bridge with an octopus baker; where 'evil' fairies having an existential crisis always carried extra handkerchiefs and yearned to be invited to Christening balls; where the snapdragon flower was more revered than the rose; roller-blading was the national sport; where little kids listened to jazz while eating fish-sticks and cinnamon custard, jalapeno juice, gyoza dumplings, soufflé; and lived in sandcastles on tropical isles or treehouses in the Amazon rainforest or in diamond palaces in floating mountain-ranges where waterfalls dissipated into the mist that fishes and Viggo the shark could surf and listen to the reverberations of classical opera; a world where there was no such thing as 'white' chocolate (which was, of course, just pure fat); and cars didn't exist.

The world Sophia had created was a place where the Babysitter with her pixie-cut, constellation of freckles and sock-fetish, a phobia of dolls, a talent as a mimic, a love of stargazing, anemones, shelling peas, perfumes and eating steamed oysters, was actually the caretaker of an elegant rogue duchess who slept on a bed of carved diamond in the midst of a dragon's glittering hoard, feasting on jambalaya and sugared-violet lemonade. The Babysitter could talk to cats, played crazy-golf with Princess Lavish and was obsessed with yo-yos. She played bridge every week with a baby-dragon who had a covey of kittens with distinctive personalities; and the Babysitter had a pet white Bantam chicken with a diamond collar who slept in a pink-silk tepee with an ostrich feather on top; she ate bananas-foster and never gained a pound as she played backgammon with the baby countess obsessed with _Horton Hears a Who_ and wooden cryptexes; and she tried to figure out her Chemistry homework while being unconventionally courted by an emperor – a scrawny lad with twinkling eyes and an aptitude for theatrics and cake-baking and sailing-knots, had an incomparable collection of Old West cowboy movies and sunburn from excessive exploring of coral-reefs and tide-pools.

Damon had no idea where Sophia's imagination came from – by all accounts, her twin-sister had none: he had been informed by Sophia that her little brother was a creative one, but hadn't taken to doodling with his graphite sticks in the wake of their parents' deaths.

He'd taken up sex with a girl two years older than him and smoking a lot of pot.

Damon hadn't known the siblings back when they were dealing with the immediate ramifications of being orphaned. But he knew Elena had sought comfort from her on-again-off-again epic love _Stefan_, _his_ baby bro… Jeremy had started smoking pot and was still worried he hadn't heard from Vicki Donovan…_oops_. But Damon had become unlikely friends with Sophia Gilbert. He had watched her engross herself in a world of fairy-tale and eccentricity and fun…

He had asked her why none of the characters _she_ had dreamed up had parents. In her words, "Parents in fairy-tales are evil or dead."

And that was more psychologically revealing than any couch-session with the school counsellor.

Damon sighed, eyeing Sophia; she had combed her hair neatly; it was now a longer pixie-cut, darker and gorgeous, if anyone valued his opinion. He thought Sophia did. But her eyes were still a little red, and when she spoke it sounded like she had a head-cold. She was wearing her "slob" clothes, the clothes she felt most comfortable in when she was miserable or cramping, usually curled up sketching; these were the clothes that indicated she wasn't going out for the rest of the day.

"Serves those women right. Hope you scalded at least one of 'em with a _babyccino_. What the hell _is_ a babyccino?"

"Best I can figure it is frothy milk with cocoa dusted on top," Sophia sighed heavily. She had bent to retrieve her sharp satchel from beneath the bench at the foot of her bed, where she always slung her backpack after returning home from school. Her school organiser was brought out, and she moved over on her knees, to curl up cross-legged beside him, lips twitching thoughtfully as she perused the detail she had annotated regarding her homework.

"People go out and order that?" Damon asked. How ridiculous!

"I find that less difficult to believe than people actually bothering to order single-shot decaf skinny lattés," Sophia sighed gently, her chin propped in her hand, her elbow on her knee, as she read through her organiser. "I mean, why even bother?"

"Don't they know what the chemical process is to decaffeinate coffee? And tea? _Very_ bad for you," Damon sniffed. He went organically-grown small-batch roasted beans from responsibly farmed coffee-plantations. He was willing to pay for it, and wished others were too: in making luxury for the masses, democracy had destroyed their environment, their future. He had lived the latter half of the Industrial Revolution, seen the world destroyed by litter and landfills, pollution from oversize cars and was appalled by the food wastage that went on everywhere. In another century and a half what in the hell would the world he would be living in look like?

"What I find laughable is they're all going on about how bad caffeine is for you, and want skimmed milk, but they insist on syrup and cocoa dusted on top," Sophia said quietly.

"How's your arm?" Damon asked, watching Sophia twiddle a Biro between her fingers. She was left-handed, which helped when she doused herself in scalding liquid at work. He didn't get why Sophia insisted on working _every_ Saturday and every Wednesday after school, and yet her "twin" did absolutely _nothing_ but rarely attend her classes and daydream about Stefan's hero-hair. Her little-brother was too young to be allowed to work, but he could've helped around the house. Even Damon pushed a vacuum around occasionally. He'd killed the help, after all.

"Okay, now," Sophia sighed softly, eyes still on her organiser.

"So, are we doing your homework now, so Jenna will let you come out and play with me tomorrow?" Damon smirked; the pretty Jenna Sommers had no idea he was upstairs in her seventeen-year-old niece's bedroom. Not that it mattered: He couldn't get her pregnant. Just turn her into a vampire. Sophia was…probably the only person in the last century and a half Damon would ever consider turning into a vampire purely for the reason he didn't think he could spend eternity without her.

"Yeah," Sophia said, and the tiniest, sweetest little smile appeared on her lips, her eyes brightening a little as she turned to smile at him. She cleared her throat softly, still perhaps a little shy at such close-quarters with him; he was, after all, an extremely handsome twenty-something who liked spending his time lolling on her bed and smirking suggestively as he went through her panty-drawer. Her lingerie was much more interesting than Elena's, which had an excess of padded _Pink for Victoria's Secret_ cotton t-shirt bras. Sophia worked with what she had, and was proud of it: delicate triangle-bras, she liked sultry demi-cup underwired bras, vintage-y silk bras and fascinating bralettes. She had a bit of a fetish – just like her fetish for patterned socks, and blushes, heels and trench coats. And bowties. She had a thing about bowties – and thousand-year-old time-travellers who wore them. "D'you want anything to drink? Or, are you hungry?"

"Yeah, I'll take a decaf skinny triple-shot latté with hazelnut syrupe and cocoa. And a mushroom, spinach and feta crêpe, only I want mozzarella, not feta, and are the mushrooms and spinach organic?"

"Oh _god_, you sound like _them_!" Sophia crowed, smacking him lightly in the stomach. He chuckled, grunting softly. Taking the organiser from her lap, he sniffed.

"So, what're we doing, Geometry or Biology?"

"Both," Sophia sighed, her shoulders slumping subtly.

"Just to give you a little motivation, here. This arrived in the mail today," Damon said, handing her a slim Amazon packet. God, he loved credit-cards and overnight shipping. Who would've ever thought? Sophia eyed the card envelope, the _Damon Salvatore, Salvatore Boarding House_ shipping-address, and opened it. She pulled out a green DVD sleeve, her brows drawing together for a second as she read the title.

"'_Africa_'!" she gasped delightedly.

"A BBC production, in HD," Damon smirked, adjusting the pillows behind his head. "It's an English DVD, should work on your player. I know how much you _love _David Attenborough. How is it a girl obsessed with Animal Planet is only pulling a B-minus average in Biology?"

"I'm also obsessed with cooking shows but I'm no Master Chef," Sophia smiled.

"Maybe that could be one of your things, y'know. Add it to the list." He raised an arm, his ring whacking lightly against something that rustled, pinned to the wall. Sophia had bought herself a packet of little plastic dinosaurs recently, cutting them in half, attaching magnets after spraying them gold. Screwing a large metal sheet to the wall above her bed after painting it, it served as a memo-board – it had the added benefit of having things drop off during the night, scaring the hell out of her, to Damon's amusement. One of the documents pinned up, a beautifully-decorated piece of cream card, was Sophia's list. On it were things like 'Wash Makeup Brushes' and 'Add a Dollar to the Grad-Trip Fund', 'Illustrate Birthday Cards', 'Taste One Thing I Never Have Before', 'Clean Bathroom Sink' and 'Pump Bicycle Tyres'. The tiny things she did every day to keep functioning. "Like that movie we watched, about the blog and Julia Childs?"

Sophia smiled, "_Julie & Julia_."

"Yeah, add it to the list. 'Learn to Be a Better Cook'."

"In this house? They're about to erect a statue in honour of the pizza delivery-guy," Sophia said, and she sighed softly, before adding, "I hate pizza."

"After eating nothing but for three months, I'm sure," Damon said, arching an eyebrow. "Come on, let's get this done before it's too late."

"You know…you don't _have_ to spend your Saturday-nights with me," Sophia said, turning an earnest expression on him, as she paused from tugging her spiral-bound five-subject notebook out of her satchel. "I know there's probably a lot of other girls you'd rather be out with."

"There aren't," Damon said, just as earnestly. He tapped her notebook, and she drew it out of her satchel, as he reached for the Biology and Geometry textbooks always located beneath her bedside-cabinet. It was funny to see how meticulously-neat Sophia's notes were for Geometry, even the colour-coded notes for Biology with neat, colourful diagrams. Her sketchbooks were _filled_ with illustrations, her History and English notebooks littered with sketches; but her math notes were scrupulous, her Biology notes thorough. They were the two classes she _had_ to pay attention in, and even then she struggled.

But Damon? He'd had a hundred and fifty years to watch the educational system expand and dumb down. They sat on Sophia's bed, a _Ramones_ album playing softly in the background, while Damon talked Sophia through the chapter her teacher had covered in the week, helping her through each equation – but not doing any of them for her; Sophia would never let him. She _needed_ to learn how to do it, and do it correctly - and Damon turned to frown at her.

"Sophia?"

"Mm?"

"Where are your glasses?" he chided. Sophia let out a sigh of annoyance, shooting him a dirty look, and reached into her satchel. She'd been forced into going to the optician when her new English Literature this year had noticed her squinting at the board – rather than be required to sit in the front row of every class, Sophia had opted for reading-glasses. They were a subtly glamorous pair of Chanel '3221Q Chain Glasses', polished and demure but very interesting on her.

He had to keep reminding her to wear them whenever she was reading or watching TV.

She slid the glasses on, sniffing subtly, and yawned, before they turned to her Biology homework.

After her Biology assignment was completed, the record-player was turned off, and Sophia put the first disc of David Attenborough's _Africa_ series on her television. Damon hadn't watched it, didn't get Sophia's obsession with animal shows, but watching _her_ watch the show was mesmerising. She seemed to be _consumed_ by the show, eyes wide with curiosity, staring transfixed at the high-quality imagery. She was _learning_. She liked to improve her mind – every week she checked a half-dozen books out of the public library, and would read every single one of them. There were a few novels, but there had also been books on Ancient Egypt, on dinosaurs, on linguistics, Shakespeare, Wordsworth poems, books on the evolution of fashion over the last millennium, and she was reading all of these on top of trying to get through three fat books – _Daughters of Rome_ by Kate Quinn, _The Lord of the Rings_ by Tolkien and _Game of Thrones_.

Damon could honestly spend every evening with Sophia like this. She'd been the one thing he'd clung to when his hopes had been utterly shattered – when it had been revealed Katherine wasn't in the tomb, had _never_ been in the tomb. There was an innocence and a fire to Sophia that were so refreshing – her sister was wearing on his last nerve, every drawn-out sigh, every demure fluttering of her lashes as she gave him a wounded, how-could-you, judgemental look.

So he'd turned her birth-mother into a vampire?

He didn't see her sharing this little nugget with her "twin" sister.

If what Stefan had discovered was true, Sophia was truly the firstborn Gilbert.

Elena was the runaway's daughter Miranda and Grayson had taken in three days before Sophia was born.

Given how he knew Sophia felt about Elena's part in their parents' deaths, he wondered how she would handle discovering her "twin" sister was anything but. That she had been adopted by two people desperate for a baby, despite having one three days from being born.

* * *

**A.N.**: So the first few chapters aren't going to be "supernatural" at all; they'll establish how normal Sophia's life is, her differences from Elena, her different outlook on things since her parents' deaths, and it'll establish her relationship with Damon.


End file.
